Vocal Range

Supported Range

Voice Type

Strengths/Achievements

Mostly able to sing in a relatively relaxed manner within a narrow mid range

Pitch is mostly pretty adequate within a narrow mid range portion of his voice

Mixed voice is relatively light and not often pushed with too much chest

Able to mix relatively easily despite improper connection of the vocal cords

Up to F#4 able to sing without too much difficulty in his mix

Lower range possesses tone despite lack of support

Possesses an understanding of stylistic choices he can make in some of his songs

Points for Improvement

Vocal cords never truly connect nor stretch properly

Often sings by using air instead of proper support

Falsetto transitions are often pitchy

Vowel shapes are often closed and tight

Runs are pitchy and lack flow

Unable to manage his airflow properly, legato is often laggy

Voice lacks in dynamics

Vibrato is very shaky and unstable due to lack of airflow control

Often sings with a high larynx

Due to his diction he can often be nasal

Registers

Lower register: The most relaxed portion of his voice. He’s able to maintain tone even to his lowest known note, however he doesn’t possess the correct connection of his vocal cords to produce a fully supported tone.

Mixed register: Most of his mix is sung with a high larynx. He shows a lack of connection of his vocal cords throughout his whole range, and tends to have the most issues with diction and a closed throat in his mix.

Upper register: His upper register mostly consists of a falsetto and an occasionally underdeveloped head voice with a very shaky wobbly vibrato due to the lack of proper support and tension in his upper register.

Agility

JYP’s musical influences come mostly from the traditional K-pop ballad genre ballad, as well as drawing influences from R&B, dance-pop and funk. As such, he often attempts to change his voice and adopt certain stylistic choices that come from certain genres, especially melismas when singing R&B. Despite this, he has yet to master singing proper vocal runs with any form of precision. Every time he attempts a vocal run, he is unable to maintain enough control of his vocal cords and thus becomes very pitchy. In order to execute a vocal run well, a vocalist must have a consistent amount of airflow being controlled by their diaphragmatic breathing. This airflow then hits the vocal cords, as they connect fully and move freely without tension from one pitch to the other, with enough rhythmic change between each pitch so that they are sung clearly and with precision. To be able to execute runs well a vocal must have good breath support, a relaxed throat and a proper connection within their vocal cords. JYP however has yet to show a grasp of breath support or vocal cord connection, causing him to end up sliding through most of his runs and not being quite at the center of pitch in any of his attempts at vocal runs. This can be heard in many examples of his performances of “너의 뒤에서,” “니가 사는 그 집,” “사랑해 그리고 기억해,” “어머님이 누구니,” “No Love No More” and “That’s What Friends Are For.” On top of that, he has actually criticized a girl auditioning for K-pop star for singing runs with too much precision and proceeded to execute a very sloppy run to demonstrate that they should be less “controlled.”

Overall analysis

JYP originally debuted in 1992 under the group “Park Jin-young and the New Generations.” Although the group fared poorly, he re-debuted in 1994 with the hit sing “떠나지마” and quickly rose to fame. He later founded his own company JYP Entertainment in 1997 and began a reign of fame by producing and creating many big groups and idols known in the industry today, such as GOT7, Wonder Girls, 2PM, 2AM, G.O.D., Twice, and etc. As an artist, he mainly specializes in dance pop tunes but also has released quite a few famous ballads throughout the years. He possesses a vast catalog of songs he’s released over the years, that range in genre but almost always become hits. His voice is generally bright and weightless, he doesn’t possess a heavy approach to his singing, usually singing with a light and heady approach overall. His voice is more than likely that of a light lyric tenor judging from the weight and passaggi in his voice.

He is known for his strong performances as well as his signature half-air, half-sound technique. Despite his promotion of the technique, the usage of breathiness in singing is a stylistic choice that many vocalists have done over the years long before JYP’s debut. Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and many other big names have used breathiness in singing to create an effect of softness, vulnerability and some sort of dynamic contrast so that they could allow their songs to grow in volume and in emotional delivery. In JYP’s case however, he’s sung this same way for years and has never changed his approach for singing despite having debuted more than 20 years ago. This means that due to not changing his vocal habits, no improvement or change has happened to his overall singing technique over the years at all.

Although it is commonly believed that the breathiness can create dynamic effects when it comes to singing, to only sing that can greatly limit a vocalist. Proper breath support is established when there is an even amount of air being pushed against the vocal cords, while they remain properly connected. When they aren’t fully connected, air passes through and so a breathy quality is created with one’s singing voice. As long as the vocal cords aren’t fully connected, a vocalist is not able to support their voice properly. So although breathiness can be used as a style, to only sing that way means that a vocalist is unable to use proper breath support when singing, which is the single most basic thing a vocalist must learn to do before learning more advanced singing technique.

From the bottom of his range to the top of his range, JYP does not ever fully connect his vocal cords. Due to that, he doesn’t properly engage his support and so he’s unable to place his sound. His lower range and chest voice lack in term of projection and volume. Impressively he is able to maintain an adequate amount of tone quality even as low as A2 and Bb2, as heard in “밎 잊은 거죠,” and “너뿐이야.” Even though tone is present in his lower range, there isn’t a specific place here he is fully using a correct stretch of his vocal cord, and although tone is mostly relaxed, it isn’t supported.

As he ascends in range, other issues start to arise from his lack of advanced technique. Since he’s yet to grasp the basics of proper breath support, he often sings with too much airiness and pushes too much air in his singing. Due to the pushing of air, his larynx becomes unstable and starts to rise. When singing with a high larynx, his throat closes due to the swallowing muscles becoming tense and he often strains. His mixed voice when phrasing can be quite light, as heard in “너뿐이야” around F#4. However when sustaining notes with a bit more power, he tends to fall back into a throatier approach where his voice is rough, pushed and full of strain even as low as F4. As he sings higher in his mix, he starts to become more and more closed, letting his throat muscles close and causing his vowels to become very tight and narrow. The result is a lot of his upper mix is quite thin and quiet, lacking power and lacking projection. This can be heard with the F#4’s in “사랑해 그리고 기억해,” the G4’s in “너의 뒤에서,” “떠나지마” and “너뿐이야,” A4’s in “That’s What Friends Are For,” “떠나지마” and “너의 뒤에서,” B4’s in “사랑해 그리고 기억해” and C5’s in “어머님이 누구니.”

His upper register is no exception to the rest of his vocal range. His transitions into falsetto are often sloppy and pitchy, as heard in “방문을 닫으면.” Not only that, his falsetto can show a huge change in volume from his mixed voice, going from present and somewhat projected, to really airy and quiet out of a sudden, as heard in “니가 사는 그 집.” Not only that, when he is able to produce a head voice, his lack of airflow causes his vibrato to sound really wobbly and uncontrolled, as heard in “너뿐이야.” As he sings higher in his falsetto, his throat muscles become more closed and his voice becomes thin, shrill and strained, as heard with the Eb5 in “니가 사는 그 집” as well as the F5 in “너뿐이야” and the F#5’s in “Honey.”

Due to the excessive airiness in his singing, he often sounds breathless and is unable to connect his musical phrases very well. Another basic skill of a vocalist is to be able to sing smooth connected lines with a clean legato. Due to the lack of support throughout his whole range, he often sounds like he is singing out of breath even when standing still, as heard in “대잔에 한 이별,” “방문을 닫으면” or “너의 뒤에서.” When comparing older versions of “너의뒤에서” to more current ones, it’s possible to hear that almost nothing has changed when it comes to his approach to singing in general. Despite this he does possesses an understanding of musicality and attempts to change his voice to a rougher approach when singing specific songs, namely “Honey,” where he sings with more style and less airiness. Nonetheless support isn’t present and he often sounds quite tense in this song as well.

As an overall entertainer and businessman, JYP is undeniable a genius. He knows what sells, he knows how to make music that’s catchy and successful on the charts. He knows the formula that it takes to create successful and lucrative idol groups and has been doing fairly well with his own company thus far. However as a vocalist, there’s a lot left to be desired and fixed when it comes to his overall singing technique. What’s most dangerous is that his vocal issues aren’t only his, but he tends to promote them as if they were a correct form of singing. This creates a lot of bad habits in a lot of his artists who are taught to sing like he does, limiting their vocal growth over the years and making them unable to develop their voices to their fullest potential.

Musicianship

JYP’s main role in the music industry is as a smart business man and a composer/producer. As such he’s able to come up with catchy tunes on the spot and has reportedly composed songs, such as Wonder Girls’ So Hot, during flights from one country to another. As a dedicated musician, he is also versatile and able to play many instruments. With this, he has written many songs throughout the years. Unfortunately when it comes to his singing, he tends to lack control of his voice. This causes him to often sound extremely tense, extremely pitchy and messy when attempting to improvise and create new performances of his original songs.

He didn’t criticize her vocal. He said she had the best voice he had ever heard on the show or at her age. What he DID criticize was her music itself, saying she focused too much on showing off her technique and skill instead of actually showing herself. Not only the other judges, but Shannon herself knew about it and agreed with him. JYP may be a weak singer, but in my opinion, even if he might be a terrible singer, but you can’t deny he knows music, knows how to make good idols and music, and knows how to succeed. And also, just because JYP is a weak singer, it doesn’t mean he automatically mean he can’t give advice or recognize mistakes. I’m not saying he is or isn’t right when he gives advice to singers, because I don’t watch KPOP Star or anything, but either way, just because he’s a weak singer, it doesn’t mean he can’t recognize wrong techniques or mistakes. For example, I’m sure the admins here don’t claim to be better as the very top singers, but they can still recognize those singer’s strengths and mistakes.

Im cri I feel like a part of this is a half rant from all the anger of watching him criticise good singers for their good singing habits, teaching the wrong ones and acting like a know-it-all. Not complaining. My blood just boils whenever I watch him act like he’s the singing God or something.

At first I thought it was April’s Fools but after recalling about all his airiness then everything makes sense. At least 15& and Twice’s vocalists has less of those characteristic airy techniques. But I thought at least untrained tenors can go as low as C3, and JYP even stops at A3?

I am an amateur singer (more like a bathroom singer tbh), but can I get your feedback for my cover? Its not the best quality, I was moving around so there are background noises, but I was just wondering if I had any support? And its really not the best, because my vocal range is incredibly limited, so the high notes are incredibly pushed, and i think my voice cracked at some point, I can’t remember. My pitch precision isn’t the best too, but a feedback from you would be incredibly nice! Thanks a lot! https://soundcloud.com/user486049036/butterfly-cover

I’m not sure if posting this on JYP’s analysis would be the right place for it, but anyway lol Well at least you’re aware that you’re pushing. 0:52 That’s A4, and you’re pushing the sound out from your throat and chest almost entirely, and it’s not supposed to feel that high for you. You need to lighten up on how you approach those notes. There is a degree of support, very good connection of the notes, pretty nice pitch, your voice is really really pretty. You just sing as if those notes were too high for you, but they’re not. You are clear and not airy which us a huge plus, I’d say you need to start developing a better approach to how you mix. Lighter without turning into falsetto, and not getting loud and pushy would be best.

When I saw the tweet warning that this would seem like an April Fool’s joke but isn’t, I assumed it would definitely be a prank lol. Reading through though, I can see it’s serious and it’s evident how much work you put into the analysis. That dang “half air, half voice” style he promotes as The Only Way To Sing… I just wish he wouldn’t try to make others do it all the time.

Of course I talk about the music industry thing 🙂 ! But what I try to say it’s “the best vocalist is not enough if you dont have the good composition”, the voice is just an instrument right? The best guitar player is not enough if he doesnt have the musicianship or at least a good composition? This is why music industry needs good composer? This is why a weak or average vocalist can touch you stronger than a excellent vocalist (I dont saying this is always the case, just that is possible). This is like the emotion in the singing right? But I feel like that if you can learn to sing with the perfect technique (or the best playing technique for instrument), you cant learn the musicianship…

Well again then what this means is just that being an excellent is not and was not ever enough to be a successful artist. To be a successful artist you need a combination of good songs, a good image, the right time in the century, being at the right place at the right time and a good arrangement of your song as well. I wouldn’t say this has to do with emotion because I don’t believe in that:

“Well as you see emotion is a very subjective thing that we’ve added onto our analyses but we call it musicality. What I call emotionless, you might find to be very emotive and vice versa. I’ll be really honest, I do not ever feel emotion from anybody’s singing. I don’t hear a song and think “that singer has a lot of emotion.” Not once would that thought cross my mind. What I think of is “that song is very beautiful” or “the lyrics are very sad” or “the melody is very happy,” to me the “emotion” aspect is something that comes from the composition of the song itself, not the vocalist. Now that is my personal view on it and it can’t be right nor wrong, it’s just my personal view. This is exactly the problem with including emotion in a vocal analysis is, there’s no objective right answer. We can’t all perceive emotion the same way but we can perceive musicality the same way. Musicality is the way a vocalist manipulates their instrument, their phrasing, their dynamics, their voice’s texture, etc, to create different effects in a song. Now that we already address in our analyses, because it can be quantified and judged objectively.”

And that’s just my view on emotion as a whole, it can’t be seen as right or wrong because it’s subjective. I disagree about the musicianship, plenty of excellent and great vocalists have great musicianship. Would you say Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Sohyang, Lena Park, Jung Dongha, Park Hyoshin, etc, don’t have great musicianship?

“if you can learn to sing with the perfect technique, you cant learn the musicianship” I don’t agree. Technique and musicianship are not mutually exclusive.
In fact I think that inadequate techniques limits development and delivery of musicianship.

For example, if Mariah Carey and Taylor Swift both sing MJ’s You Are Not Alone, TS being a much weaker vocalist than MC would not automatically make her version bad, but her limitation in vocal techniques would definitely limit her from delivering the song as smooth/ dramatic/ musical as MC would be able to do, and that would affect the performance appealing to audience as emotional/ moving/ saddening/ exciting or what not.

Personally I think if a singer can’t control his/ her voice to do things at will, it would be hard to express any musicianship or ’emotion’ through singing.

That’s why I’m always annoyed seeing him giving wrong advise to others (e.g. KPOPSTAR candidates) that would lead to vocal damage if any would follow his ‘technique’. Sadly there’re plenty of victims already.
Somehow I hope more people (including YeRin) could have seen this analysis so that they can hopefully not damage their voices or worsen it by following bad example.

Aaah my bad english 😡 this is not exactly what I tried to say (I’m so sorry I try my best but this is hard my english is so poor)!
“Would you say Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Sohyang, Lena Park, Jung Dongha, Park Hyoshin, etc, don’t have great musicianship”
““if you can learn to sing with the perfect technique, you cant learn the musicianship” I don’t agree. Technique and musicianship are not mutually exclusive.”
-> Nooo this isnt what I tried to explain at all haha! This is more like “You can learn to sing with a perfect technique but musicianship is different, this is more like a natural thing acquired by your relation with art throughout life, a thing you cant really learn”. I dont know if It’s more clear like that!
So of course a excellent vocalist can have a awesome musicanship :)!
For the “emotion part” I understand what you say! I’m agree 🙂

This is not the first time someone’s asked about her and honestly I’m not sure. I don’t think she’s a contralto, I want to say she is a soprano who sings with a lot of chestiness, almost no head voice and a very aggressively pushed down larynx position with a lot of tension. Please keep in mind the ratings we give to vocalists we’ve never analyzed could be completely wrong so take it with a grain of salt. Lady Gaga perhaps good to great, Beyonce perhaps excellent, Mariah in her prime perhaps excellent, Barbra perhaps good, or great, in her prime.

Ohhhhh Keiko ❤ So happy that Kalafina isn't too forgotten to day! Side-tracking: In my opinion she has regressed so much, like really a lotttttttttttttt since 2011(and actually Wakana and Hikaru too). She used to sound much more natural (naturally womanly and smooth, still chesty though) but now her voice sounds overly rigid and very pushed to artificially create a dark sound. (btw do you know Keiko could hit a E5 live?)
Her best years, I'd say, is from her debut with Kalafina until Red Moon and with FictionJunction until Everlasting Song Tour in 2009.
It's always so heartbreaking noticing your favourite singers' regression…

I find it so funny because JYP always brags about how well he knows how to sing and he teaches his bad technique to all the trainees ahaha. He always speaks about vocal technique like he knows shit lol. The breathe and sing thing from JYP is ridiculous, I hope the singers won’t have nodules in the future… I’m actually worried for Twice or Got7 members
Anyway thank you for the very informative analysis like usual ~

This article proves nothing that we say wrong because the person who wrote this article isn’t a vocalist nor a vocal coach. He is an instrumentalist and a producer, so he is looking at the term resonance incorrectly. Ignoring his disrespectful words, he explains the term “resonance” from a physics point of view. As if any sound that is projected and loud is automatically resonant, which perhaps in physics is correct but not with singing. The term resonance in singing has its own meaning. Resonance is produced when the sound of one’s voice is placed correctly in the mask, chest or head, or a combination of all three, while the tongue is relaxed, and forward, the soft palate is lifted, the throat opened, the larynx neutral or even perhaps low, when the vocal cords are connected and stretched properly against the right amount of air pressure, and thus the sounds resonates and echoes throughout ones resonating chambers within their body and then projects outside. This is the definition of resonance when it comes to singing, not simply a sound that is projected because then anybody who strains loudly is “resonant,” which is the furthest thing away from the truth.

So no, this article does not prove anything we say about resonance wrong. All this article proves is that this user does not have enough knowledge to talk about singing technique and its terms…and yet tries to write articles about it that would misinform readers. It’s like if you ask someone to explain the word “Cloud” and they say it’s the fluffy thing in the sky, and telling everybody else who uses the internet and the term “Cloud” as a place to store files that they are wrong. Neither of them are wrong, but it is wrong for the 1st person to explain a term outside of its context and tell other people that the other term is incorrect simply because they don’t understand it.

Hello Ahmin! I know this isn’t your field/isn’t Kpop but I can’t help my curiousty. Have you ever listened to Arab singers? I’ll just assume that you didn’t and I would really love to cite some Arab artists like Umm Kulthum, Sabah, Fayruz, Abd El Halim Hafiz, Abd El Wahab, Shadya, Fayza Ahmad… Could you perhaps someday vocally profile any of them? I’m so curious as to how proficient they were in terms of vocal technique. Also, I would like to add in any known Sheikh especially Egyptian, they recite the Qur’an in a way similar to music but is not actually music but they always, always have powerful voices because they focus mostly on the diaphragm. I’m not entirely confident whether this topic piques your interest, but at least my mind will be at ease now that I’ve asked you!

Hi honey. Unfortunately I’m going to have to give you a no and for a couple of reasons. It’s already very tiring, time consuming and difficult for us to analyze K-pop vocalists, especially since we actually like K-pop, speak the language and know the background of the technique behind. Arab singers and the singing technique in countries like that is very different. It is a lot less like contemporary singing and a lot more folk, a lot more similar to Pansori or traditional Korean singing, which we can’t analyze either because it’s not contemporary. Our standards wouldn’t match the way they sing at all, so that would be the same for Arab singer. Thank you for asking and I greatly appreciate it but it just isn’t something we have the ability to do casually without being very familiar with the topic.

Oh wow I was curious about that too I heard about oum kaltoum(sorry if I spelled the name wrong) the Arabic singer somewhere I guess people consider her as the best contralto female in the world I am not sure if this true cuz the way she sing song like Chinese traditional song so it’s weird. .do you know any good contralto female singer with good techniques

i’m wondering if you could help me out a bit… i’m an okay singer, but the problem i have is that i can’t really put any power into my voice when singing? i can sing like speaking-level loud but if i attempt to sing louder i just…. can’t? why is this and how do i fix it? i sound so emotionless, flat and boring because of this ):

What I find really interesting was his “more emotion, less technique” that he has with singing also applies to dancing. Some episodes of Sixteen really showed this. When he was teaching the Majors a dance for a performance he said something like “it is not high you place your arms but the feeling you create.” For reason I can’t imagine SM telling Shinee that (known for being perfectly together). At least he is consistent

My current voice teacher strongly encourages the use of low register and discourages head and mix, because he says that for commercial/contemporary music, low register is the best choice for stylistic and quality purposes. Not to mention that shout comes from low register.
However, I don’t know that I really understand this- could you please elaborate on why this is so? Because for instance, I find that I am very comfortable singing in mix, and that when I want to project, my voice does naturally mix a little. So I am trying to understand this concept because I think this is what is keeping me from improving my singing.
Ailee, So Hyang, Hyoshin, the greats- do they do most of their singing in low register?

I can’t elaborate on this for two reasons. 1. I am not your voice teacher. 2. I don’t agree. You should probably ask your voice teacher what they mean because what they’re saying makes no sense, unless you’re a girl. For contemporary singing and commercial music, the human ear is mostly attracted to frequencies that coincidently fall within the fourth octave of the piano. If you notice, most people tenor songs are written within C4 ~ C5, same for soprano pop songs. Most sopranos sing in their mid range when singing like popular music, and most tenors sing in the top of their range, because it is the range most humans can sing along to as well. So truthfully, I have absolutely no idea what your voice teacher is talking about because it makes no sense to me at all. Most of the greats sing in their mixed voices, most of the greats belt. Now if we’re talking about commercial success, then most pop music is sung within the F3 ~ F5 range, for tenors and sopranos. So to say you must focus on your low register when literally everybody mixes makes no sense at all.

I went back to check your past comments and I see that you’ve requested SPICA, Ali and K.Will within the past two years. I hope you were able to enjoy those analyses. haha

Ahmin3, thanks so much for your response. And yes I did enjoy those analyses, absolutely.

In regards to the inquiry at hand- yes I am female. And that is my confusion as well- whenever I belt (on my own) my voice mixes rather than stemming completely from low register for two reasons: 1) I feel i have better control and 2) i feel I can lift my soft palette more effectively when I mix. My teacher says I need to lift palette from low (which is true), but my difficulty is that since I sometimes end up singing from my throat. Alright, well, this means I need to do some more introspecting, research, and understanding of what my voice is doing, what it wants to do, and what different things mean. I strongly feel that my philosophical understanding of singing is at the moment my main obstacle to becoming stronger as a singer….because I’m mentally confused what to do. Thanks for your input, it’s very helpful.

It makes no sense to pull your chest voice that high either especially if you’re singing around A4 ~ C5, as a female. It is healthier to mix and literally everybody who has good technique mixes there. I think…that your understanding might not be the problem, because what your instructor is saying sounds unhealthy to me. Could you show me your singing so I can hear what’s going on and you show me what you normally do and what they want you to do?

Ahmin, I was wondering (since JYP is often a judge and advisor for other vocalists) whether it’s ok for those who don’t have proper technique to be able to have a good understanding of someone else’s vocal technique? Sports coaches are sometimes those who don’t have the skills to play but have a very good understanding of the game and are able to teach well, so I wonder if it applies to singing as well.

I don’t think JYP is skilled in hearing technique . I think he is skilled in hearing what most people like . Strained or Not .
And I think he gonna do the same to New Boy Group candidate named Stray Kids .
I am afraid he is going to mess up some good potential vocalist with his bogus technique .